Re: mission statement thoughts for PEAR

On 11/29/06, Greg Beaver <greg@chiaraquartet.net> wrote:

Hi all, Don't forget to post your thoughts on the most important aspects of PEAR's mission. Here are mine (some are duplicates of thoughts by others). I've split them into missions from the user's perspective, and from the developer's perspective. Users: PEAR should be a repository of high-quality, well-documented code.

Of course PEAR should provide self-contained libraries that can be used to

implement solutions not already built into PHP - PEAR should extend PHP, not duplicate it

And should be soo good that it can barely get replicated. PEAR should provide PHP-only alternatives to non-standard extensions Even for standards extension, unless i'm missing something. PEAR should provide full-scale applications to handle

infrastructure-related PHP needs (phpdocumentor, etc.) PEAR should require a high barrier to the "stable" label, requiring full docs, full unit tests, and API review

Yes but this is very hard because of two majors point (imho) first, people do not all have the time to review and analyze the code proposed Second, the pear group doesn't seem stable enough right now to have everyone analizing the code proposed, but yes, I am thinking along the same lines, stable, full docs, full unit tests, api review! PEAR should have an easy-to-understand and community-based review system

of all packages PEAR should seek to support PHP development in general by concentrating on interoperating with other solutions out there, such as eZ Components, Zend Framework, Cake, Symfony, Solar - to make it as easy as possible for users to switch and to coordinate libraries from different sources.

This might be hard as some of those really do want to promote their products towards a service to sell.., although, yes, it would be very nice to see a cooperation between all those. Developers:

PEAR should be a hotbed of innovation as well as a source of stable code, supporting and rewarding active developers with fame and space to host and to advertise their code.

Stable is the keyword here.. PEAR should encourage cooperation between developers to provide simple,

unified API coordination so it is easy to plug in any PEAR library. PEAR should provide an "alphaworks" where there are looser restrictions on entry PEAR should provide mini-communities within PEAR organized around like packages (all HTML processing packages, all PEAR installer infrastructure packages) where developers can coordinate better, and support this within the pear.php.net website.

As some of you may be aware, Christian Weiske and I are currently working on some maps for mapping the developers with a map on pear.php.net, you can take a look at the first ideas related to this there: http://blog.agoraproduction.com/index.php?/archives/10-Mapping-pear-developers-on-pearweb!pear.php.net.html Or you can litterally go on the images right away: http://dev.agoraproduction.com/pear/pearweb/pearweb1.png http://dev.agoraproduction.com/pear/pearweb/pearweb2.png http://dev.agoraproduction.com/pear/pearweb/pearweb3.png http://dev.agoraproduction.com/pear/pearweb/pearweb4.png http://dev.agoraproduction.com/pear/pearweb/pearweb5.png This currently works perfectly with Firefox, but we need to get some people to test it on Internet Explorer, so if anyone has IE and a working pearweb installed, please speak up :-) There is files to alter and a database table to alter (users) Greg

-- PEAR Development Mailing List (http://pear.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php Might extra thoughts:

PEAR should have a new kind of repository, only for PHP5 package, or a section on the website, that crawls thru the packages, and make an extra section showing only the php5 (only) packages. PEAR needs a wiki.. PEAR needs a group of people that are really ready to work, not just get ranking on google and obtain a @php.net account.. (even though I am using it :-)) PEAR devs need to talk to each other.. we look like a kind of government now, also, if everyone doing pear packages (even if they used to be pear packages) should create some kind of trackbacks in order to be able to track every single packages that is pear'ified in order to prevent code duplication. Thank you! :) -- David Coallier, Founder & Software Architect, Agora Production (http://agoraproduction.com) 51.42.06.70.18